The Boy Who Played Chequers
When Mike, a spiritually restless expat drifting through Bangkok, stumbles upon a strange little blue book in a shadowy bar, his reality begins to unravel.
The book is written by Peter, a missing American boy obsessed with checkers-whose final game ended in his unexplained disappearance.
As Mike dives deeper into its pages-pages that seem to change each time he reads them-he is pulled into a mystery that bends time, memory, and identity. Guided by this urban legend, and by visions from his past, he finds himself in an abandoned jungle temple and drawn into the darkness of his own heart, where consciousness becomes a game, identity a costume, and dreams blur with reality.
WHO is Mike, really?
American. Buddhist. Recently deceased-or so it seems.
As Mike follows the book's cryptic instructions-visiting monks, exorcists, hackers, and one unnervingly calm sex worker-his memories begin to split and refract. Time glitches. Truth evaporates. Bangkok pulses like a machine with a virus. And Peter? He may not be missing. He may never have existed.
The Boy Who Played Chequers is a surreal, satirical noir about identity, illusion, and the flickering line between consciousness and code. A mind-bending journey for fans of Fight Club, The Beach, and Black Mirror-for anyone who's ever suspected the afterlife might just be a patch update gone wrong.
About the Author
James Newman has been described as "terrifically gifted, enormously energetic" by Edgar Award nominee Timothy Hallinan, and "a writer who strips away the bull****" by Shamus Award winner Christopher G. Moore. Based in Bangkok, Newman writes fiction and makes films. The Boy Who Played Chequers is his ninth novel-a razor-edged metaphysical mystery about death, digital ghosts, and waking up in the wrong reality.
Customer Reviews
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